WiFi is becoming an important component for cellular operators to help them meet market demand and increase their competitive edge. Cellular operators are motivated to integrate WiFi access into their existing cellular networks, and many available mobile devices have dual mode (WiFi and cellular) capability. The WiFi Alliance is defining a Hotspot 2.0 specification to help dual mode or WiFi-only devices to better select the correct WiFi network that is owned by the operator to which it is subscribed or has a roaming relationship. This network selection technology is based on Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11u standard. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) also defines several mechanisms for a mobile device to determine and select a wireless local area network (WLAN) via policies that may be statically pre-configured by the operator on the device, also referred to as user equipment (UE). Such policies may also be dynamically set by the operator via the Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF) within the network.
When a user chooses to connect to a WiFi network, the user device uses IEEE 802.11u Access Network Query Protocol (ANQP) to discover different features and available services of the WiFi network. The device then proceeds to the authentication process. To connect to a cellular network, a UE interacts with an ANDSF in the network, e.g., through the WiFi network, to get a network selection policy from the cellular network. Currently the ANQP server and ANDSF are two independent entities, although they are related to each other since ANDSF configures the UE WiFi network selection policy, and the UE uses the policy to query (e.g., using ANQP) the right information in the WiFi network. While WiFi access is being further integrated into cellular networks, there is benefit to integrate the ANQP server into ANDSF as they are both policy servers for network selection, e.g., to simplify and speed up the network discovery process.